General News

I read a story recently about a 55 year old divorcee who ran into an unexpected obstacle when she decided to try online dating. It was her daughter. She had told her that her main worry was safety and the type of men she may meet online. I think her daughter's real problem is that her mom wants to date again. Safety concerns of meeting people from dating sites are important, but in reality are not much different than meeting other people at bars or singles events. You just have to use common sense.

I went through a similar experience a while ago myself when one of my parents decided to get back into the dating game. Most of my mom's friends are happily married which made it hard for her to meet someone new and single through them. She also lived out in the country which further distanced herself from other singles. While it was a little weird for me to have one of my parents wanting to date again I knew the most obvious solution for her was online dating. Dating sites make it easy for you to scope out who is available close by, while you remain anonymous until you want to take the plunge. I recommended a few sites to my mom, told her what was involved and how things worked, and she was off and online dating.

She had success in the first 2 weeks of her online experience. She went on a date with the man who she is still together with, almost 3 years later. While it takes the average online dater 3 months to meet Mr. or Miss. Right, a large part of my mom's success was due to the time and effort she put into writing her dating profile. I gave her a few important tips about writing a dating profile and while I told her I didn't want to get too involved in the whole process (as I had mentioned, it was still a little weird for me), I told her it was important to review the profile with a few of her closest friends during her rewrite sessions so she could get an outsiders perspective.

If you are 50 and over and are thinking about trying online dating, you are not alone. Your age group is reported to be the fastest growing segment over the last few years by many of the major dating sites like Match.com (see Review) and eHarmony (see Review). For dating sites which specialize in matching older singles, take a look at our Dating Over 50 category.

Karina Smirnoff and Maksim Chmerkovskiy of Dancing with the Stars officially called off their engagement last weekend. The couple became an item during a season of the show in 2008 and became engaged 6 months later during New Year's Eve, in Las Vegas.

Funny how this news comes about 2 weeks before the premiere of the new season of Dancing with the Stars on ABC. I call that good timing!

Anyways, in this season of the show, Karina will be partnered with Aaron Carter and Maksim with Debi Mazar.

Match.com's Whitney Casey was on The Early Show Saturday Edition sharing some insiders secrets of what relationship experts find makes for a good online dating profile that will help you get notice and to avoid moves which will turn potential matches off.

First impressions count in online dating so your profile picture needs to be good. It should show your face clearly and smiling. Natural photos are best (instead of a head shoot from your local photographer). Black and white photos and photos cropped from others are not recommended.

Casey suggests to answer the who, what, when, where and why in your profile questions along with anything you feel strongly about like smoking or for example, you only date guys who are taller than you. Above all Casey says to be honest in your profile. Think of it as a type of resume.

For a video of this segment on The Early Show, visit CBS News and to find out more about this dating site, read our Match.com review.

Looks like this post is a week late. From September 20 until the 26 in 2009 it was National Singles Week. In the 1980s, the Buckeye Singles Council of Ohio started this observance which falls on the third full week of September. It was started to

... acknowledge that many unmarried Americans do not identify with the word “single” because they are parents, have partners or are widowed.

Here are some recent interesting facts and statistics on singles in America:

• There are now 95.9 million unmarried people in the U.S. who are 18 years or older. This makes up 43 percent of all adults. (from 2008)
• 53 percent of these singles are women
• 61 percent of these singles never have been married before. 24 percent have been divorced and a further 15 percent were widowed.
• Seniors (65+) account for 15.8 million of adult singles which 16 percent having never been married.
• 11.6 million of adult singles are parents living with their children, 9.8 million are women.

For the full fact sheet on the Unmarried and Single Americans Week, visit the U.S. Census Bureau.

The popular magazine Wired, has written an article on the tragedy of Craigslist and how a site which almost a fifth of American adults visit every month has become such a mess. The showcase of Craigslist's problems is of course their personals category. Unfortunately the majority of personal ads are either fake or scams with some estimates as high as 84% (see Story). A large number of these personal ads are written by sex workers which has landed Craigslist in legal troubles and being called one of the largest sources of prostitution in America (see Story). The news stories about the "Craigslist Killers" also have not helped matters either for the internet classifieds company (see Story). Other categories on the site have similar problems with fake ads, including the jobs and apartment hunting categories.

A major part of Craigslist success is that it is mostly free, this is also part of the problem as anyone can post an ad with very little editorial review. Most of Craigslist money is made through apartment listings and some job ads. Lately the personals category, Adult Services went paid to in part pay for editors to review any ads in this section before being posted. Craigslist is a privately held company owned by Craig Newmark. No real information has been released about their financials but a few firms have estimated that Craigslist's paid ads revenue could reach $100 million for this year.

For the full article and to find out how it all began for Craigslist, read Wired. To find out more about Craigslist personals dating category read our review.

We last looked at OkCupid's A-List membership when it was first launched in mid August (see Story). It is 22 days later and they still have T-Shits to give out to the first 1000 membership upgrades. If OkCupid is close to meeting 1000 paid users then they are averaging roughly 40 paid members a day which IMO are not exactly stellar numbers. I also notice there are no men's sizes left and only 3 of the 4 women's colors left. This shows that there are most likely a lot more men paid users than women. I wonder what the free membership gender split is on OkCupid? Quantcast estimates it at 56% male and 44% female for last month.

To find out more about this dating service which allows you to make your own dating tests, read our OkCupid.com review.